REVIEW: An Unexpected Story in ‘Too Old For Fairy Tales’

Directed by Kristoffer Rus and based on the novel by Agnieszka Dabrowska, Too Old For Fairy Tales (Za Duzy Na Bajki) is a Polish-language coming-of-age story that isn’t even a little bit about what you think it will be. Our movie opens with Waldek (Maciej Karas) in the midst of preparing for his esport team’s tournament. But then the movie transforms a few times over as his mother (Karolina Gruszka) has to go away for some time and his wacky aunt (Dorota Kolak) comes to stay with him. It’s a movie about their feud, about Waldek’s relationship with his best friend and teammate Staszek (Patryk Siemek), it’s about family and lies and girls. And I guess really, in the end, it’s just about growing up.

Truly, every single time I thought I had this movie pinned down for what it was, it completely turned around and shocked me. And in the best kind of way nearly every time. When it began, I was expecting a whole movie about the build-up to an esports tournament. Instead, what I got was a complexly layered story about a kid growing up with an overprotective mother who has to learn not only how to break free of her expectations but also how to protect her in return. Waldek’s mother is sick, and she’s hiding it. So when his eccentric aunt comes to stay, he’s both overwhelmed by her demandingness and distraught by the truth he continuously uncovers about his mother.

When Aunt Mariola first rolls onto the scene, I expected, again, that the whole movie would be about their feuding and his eventually getting her to crack while he learns some things about being older and responsible. It turns out that I simply should have stopped guessing anything about this movie the moment it started because it looks nothing like that. A seemingly harsh character at first, she is repeatedly shown in new lights, never really changing or growing, whereas our perspective of her is constantly shifting. It’s a really neat way of putting us in Waldek’s shoes as he grows too; she gets a tad softer, sure, but not by all that much, so we too have to grow into a relationship with her.

One tough spot with Mariola initially is her obsession with making Waldek exercise. He’s a fat kid, and it was rather discomforting to watch her harping on his weight and body repeatedly. It’s a factor that feels at least somewhat remedied by the fact that as time goes on, it seems that her insistence on his exercise was not really about his being fat (though she does make some crude comments) but rather comes from an anxious place of needing to be in constant motion and never standing idol. Plus, he does seem to genuinely grow to enjoy the exercise. It just clearly begins from a place of fatphobia made worse by the fact that he’s an avid video game player with dreams of being a professional, even calling himself an athlete.

One other thread of Too Old For Fairy Tales I have a slight complaint about is how late into the movie the love interest Ant (Amelia Fijalkowska) is introduced. It makes sense in the context of other plot points it serves, especially the relationship between Waldek and Staszek. But coming in so late, it prevents her from having much valuable screen time or much of an opportunity to be her own character outside of services others’ developments. She does have a pretty rad moment, but I still would like to have had her introduced just a tad earlier.

Otherwise, though, the pacing is a major part of the movie’s success for me. Its turns happen just far enough apart that they’re not sharp and hardly noticeable at the moment but close enough together that there is a good deal of them. By the end of the movie, I was in love with both Waldek and Mariola and found the whole thing charming. Waldek grows a ton from beginning to end, and while a lot of the weight of that growth lies in the script, there’s a subtle shift in the kind of confidence that Karas exudes in the end compared to the beginning. He’s just one of the sweetest kids on Netflix recently.

Too Old For Fairy Tales is hard to pin down, so rather than try and fail, I will simply recommend giving it a patient chance. It’s not what you might expect at first and really never remains one thing for too long in a way that reflects the movements of life and growing up.

Too Old For Fairy Tales is streaming exclusively on Netflix now.